When a bad software update from the security firm CrowdStrike inadvertently caused digital chaos around the world last month, the first signs were Windows computers showing the Blue Screen of Death. As websites and services went down and people scrambled to understand what was happening, conflicting and inaccurate information was everywhere. Rushing to understand the crisis, longtime Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle knew that there was one place he could look to get the facts: crash reports from computers impacted by the bug.
“Even though I am not a Windows researcher, I was intrigued by what was going on, and there was this dearth of information,” Wardle tells WIRED. “People were saying that it was a Microsoft problem, because Windows systems were blue-screening, and there were a lot of wild theories. But actually it had nothing to do with Microsoft. So I went to the…
